Wine-rating system is not improving with age - Business - International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK — In the hands of marketers who have transformed wine into a multibillion-dollar industry, The Number is often all that counts.

Case in point: Wine Spectator, a handsome, glossy monthly publication that markets itself as a field guide for wine aficionados, recently bestowed a rating of 90 on a 2004 cabernet sauvignon from the Valentin Bianchi Famiglia winery in Argentina.

After the wine received the 90, Brian Zucker, who oversees online sales for K&L Wine Merchants, a large retailer in San Francisco, decided to promote the Valentin Bianchi cabernet in an e- mail message to tens of thousands of customers.

If it had scored an 89, Zucker said, "we would have sold a tiny fraction of what we'll end up moving." But because of the 90, and considering the wine's price, $12.99, he declared himself "absolutely confident" that K&L would sell its inventory of the Argentine cabernet.

Zucker said he was promoting the Valentin Bianchi because he considered it an attractive buy even before Wine Spectator gave it 90. But that is hardly always the case with a high-scoring wine. "A wine that is highly rated takes on a life of its own," he said. "It doesn't necessarily represent the best value, but that doesn't seem to matter."

A rating system that draws a distinction between a cabernet scoring 90 and one receiving an 89 implies a precision of the senses that even many wine critics agree that human beings do not possess. Ratings are quick judgments that a single individual renders early in the life of a bottle of wine that, once expressed numerically, magically transform the nebulous and subjective into the authoritative and objective.

When pressed, critics allow that numerical ratings mean little if they are unaccompanied by corresponding tasting notes ("hints of blackberry," "a good nose"). But The Number has become one of the wheels that keep the glamorous, lucrative machinery of the wine business turning. It also has become so overused and ubiquitous that it may well be meaningless - other than as an index of how a once mystical, high-end product for the elite is being enveloped with the same marketing high jinks as other products peddled to the masses.

"On many levels it's nonsensical," Joshua Greene, the editor and publisher of Wine & Spirits, said. He has been using the 100-point system to judge wines in his magazine for about a dozen years.

Wine shop managers might dismiss ratings as simplistic - numbers devoid of context, like a merchant's sense of individual customer tastes. But the ratings are helping to feed two significant trends ripping through the business: the might of discount retailers like Costco and the growth of online retail outlets. For better or for worse, The Number is proving an effective stand-in for the knowledgeable wine shop salesclerk.

"It's a guide," said Marvin Shanken, the editor and publisher of Wine Spectator, which helped to popularize the 100-point system. "It's not an absolute." But a numerical score suggests anything but an approximation: Try telling a winery suffering the economic consequences of a disappointing 89 for its signature vintage that The Number is nothing more than a guide.

"Every day I have people come in the store," said Larry Leventhal at First Avenue Vintner in New York, "and they tell me they're not interested in hearing about any wine unless Parker gave it at least a 90."

That's a reference to Robert Parker Jr. This lawyer turned self-employed wine critic introduced the 100-point system to the wine world in 1978, when he started a wine-buying guide called The Wine Advocate, published every two months.

Until that time, critics in the United States and abroad tended to use a simple five-point system - if they used any scoring system at all. But Parker fashioned himself after Ralph Nader, a crusading U.S. consumer advocate on a quest, in this case to enlighten the discriminating wine buyer. Scoring wines on a scale of 50 to 100 seemed like the perfect vehicle to advance his cause.

"Consumers understood the 100- point rating system almost viscerally," said Elin McCoy, author of "The Emperor of Wine: The Rise of Robert M. Parker Jr. and the Reign of American Taste."

"Whatever a person knew or didn't know about wine, they understood that a grade of 98 is a good thing, and a 72 not so good."

To avoid being influenced by the name or reputation of a winery, Parker tasted batches of wine together, slipping the bottles into paper bags and then mixing them up and rating each one. Under his system, a 96 to 100 is an extraordinary wine, 90 to 95 is excellent, and 80 to 89 is above average to very good.

As Parker's influence grew, retailers started quoting "Parker Points" in advertisements and other promotional materials. That raised his profile and that of The Wine Advocate - and inspired other publications, eager to market their own titles, to adopt a 100-point scale, McCoy said. Wine Spectator was the first, in the mid-1980s.

Another 10 years or so passed before the next set of magazines, Wine Enthusiast and Wine & Spirits, adopted 100-point systems, both in the mid- 1990s. But by that time the American wine industry had changed notably.

Wine consumption in the United States began to grow appreciably in the late 1960s, analysts say, but that translated primarily into a huge increase in the sale of jug wines, like Gallo's Hearty Burgundy and sweet fizzy concoctions like Riunite Lambrusco.

America's lusty embrace of more expensive wines sold in 750-milliliter bottles did not start until about 1980, those same experts say. Parker and Shanken both rode and drove that trend. Today, those in the wine industry - winemakers, wine merchants, wine writers and other self-described "cork dorks" - say the United States is in the middle of a golden age of wine, in no small part because of the Parker scoring system.

"There's no doubt that the 100-point score has played a role in the growing popularity of wine," said Jon Fredrikson, a wine consultant in Woodside, California.

But cork dorks say that the only scores that count are those of the first two publications to embrace the 100- point scale: Parker's Wine Advocate and Shanken's Wine Spectator. That has not stopped retailers from cherry-picking high scores no matter who comes up with them. Wine.com uses no less than seven sources when fishing for members of the 90+ club, including The Wine News, the Connoisseurs Guide and the International Wine Cellar. And in a pinch, Wine.com is not above turning to an eighth source.

For instance, when promoting Capcanes 2001 Costers del Gravet, a Spanish wine, Wine.com quoted a well-regarded publication, International Wine Cellar, written by Stephen Tanzer, in its review. But the source of the 91 that earned the 2001 Costers a place on its 90+ list was Wine.com itself.

The company did not return a call seeking comment.

The 100-point rating system is imperfect, said James Laube, the Spectator's chief critic of California wines. But he also sees it as the best safeguard against paying too much for a painfully mediocre product, especially if someone takes the time to read his tasting notes.

"I don't see how it can be harmful for consumers when you have 4 or 6 or 10 people offer an opinion on a bottle of wine," Laube said. "I think it's a very valuable service to let people know if there are imperfections in a wine."

Yet there are grumblings that some winemakers may care too much about them. It is easy to start an argument in the wine industry by positing that many winemakers fashion wines to please the palettes of Parker, Laube and other high- profile critics. Parker and the critics from Wine Spectator tend to save their highest ratings for robust-tasting, more intense wines, and consultants like Enologix, based in Sonoma, California, understand that. In its promotional materials, Enologix promises to use chemistry to "assist wine makers" in "boosting average national critics' scores."

But some fear that the worldwide influence of Parker, who has been described as the planet's most powerful critic, will eventually mean a homogenization of wines.

Analysts say that the rating system, at least as deployed in the United States, favors certain varietals. Wines made from so-called noble grapes - cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and chardonnay - tend to dominate the 90+ lists because they tend to be more complex wines with blockbuster potential. Wines using chenin blanc grapes, on the other hand, taste less powerful by comparison. So simpler wines like chenin blancs tend not to generate show-off scores.

"That's another way numbers are misguiding people," said William Tisherman, a former Wine Enthusiast editor who now calls himself a "recovering critic" and helps clients sponsor wine- tasting parties. "A 96 is better than an 86, but not if you want a light-bodied wine, and Americans tend to prefer light-bodied wines. Yet those are also the wines least likely to get a good score."

Tisherman argues that it is time to drop the 100-point system because it limits the spectrum of wines that sell well. Still, the 100-point scale may have once been a useful bridge, he and others said, helping many Americans attain a more refined, perhaps even European, preference for premium bottles. If trends continue, the United States will pass Italy in two years as the world's second-largest consumer of wine, behind France. But that is only in total volume: The United States still does not rate in the top 25 countries in per capita consumption.

In recognition of this growing sophistication, Michael De Loach, the vice president of the Hook & Ladder winery in Sonoma County, says it is time to switch to a three- or four-star rating system because "applying a 100-point scale to wine is dishonest. It makes the consumer think it's scientific." He expressed his appreciation for the publications that have established their reputations by using it, but also declared it a "noble experiment whose time is over."